Software applications sometimes go offline unexpectedly, either fully or partially, and software state views always contain more data than that is tested in any given test. When test automation development is still underway for a given system under test (SUT), such unexpected downtime can present acute problems by holding up work and preventing incremental progress.
Also, even when the system under test is up and fully available, there are situations where it would be inefficient for a tester to walk through an entire test flow on the live application merely in order to examine some aspect of a particular page/activity. Finally, collections of tests or their systems under test often have qualities or considerations that do not become evident until tests' data have been examined in aggregate. In such cases, storing representations of and simulating system under test behavior offline can be very useful.
There is thus a need for addressing these and/or other issues associated with the prior art.